The following description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
With the advent of smart phones and various online social networks, it is desirable to have contact information available at a click of a button. Often times, people store information of known contacts on their smart phones in an organized format such as in one or more contact directories. However, it can be very difficult for one to know (and then store) contact information of all persons whom one desires to be able to contact. Contact information also changes from time to time (e.g., people changing their phone numbers or email addresses, etc.). Thus, managing and updating contact directories can be challenging and time-consuming.
Effort has been directed to solve the above problems by generating shared contact lists. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,743,024 to Mandre (“Mandre”) titled “Synchronizing Contacts” discloses a peer-to-peer method of synchronizing the contact information of a group of users between the group of users over a communication network. In Mandre, a user belonging to the group of users can select contact information of other users and invite other users to synchronize the contact information with each other.
Similarly, U.S. Patent Application No. 2014/0,066,044 to Ramnani (“Ramnani”) titled “Crowd-sourced contact information and updating system using artificial intelligence” discloses a method and system for crowd sourcing and managing contact and profile information of a user's contacts. In Ramnani, any individual in the group can make changes in his or her contact lists. When the changes in individual's contact list are made, the crowd-sourced contact list can be automatically updated and populated based on contributed information by the individual. Ramnani also discloses that the crowd-sourced contact list can also be edited, added or updated by users of the crowd-sourced contact list. Yet, the changes made in the crowd-sourced contact list may be differently weighed based on the identity of the users. However, neither Mandre nor Ramnani expands shared contact lists by adding contact information of a person or an entity, which does not belong to the group.
Others have made efforts to expand shared contact lists by adding contact information of a person or entity, which is not a member of the shared group. For example, U.S. Patent Application No. 2008/0,292,080 to Quon (“Quon”) titled “System and method for adding and associating users on contact address book” discloses a service to allow a service user to add other service users and non-users into the service user's address book based on contact telephone numbers. In addition, Quon provides a method of associating the service users based on user contact number by comparing sets of contact information between users. Thus, when a portion of the set of contact information of one user matches the information related to another user, those two users are associated by virtue of having each other's contact information in their contact lists. However, Quon's association system is limited to comparing contact information between users and associating one user with another.
All publications herein are incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual publication or patent application were specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference. Where a definition or use of a term in an incorporated reference is inconsistent or contrary to the definition of that term provided herein, the definition of that term provided herein applies and the definition of that term in the reference does not apply.
Thus, there is still a need for an improved contact lists management system that allows contact information to be updated and maintained automatically.